Saturday, December 20, 2008

More Ornaments - a safer choice

I seem to have taken a break from the Holly and Hearts sampler ... probably because most of my stitching time has been in the wee small hours of the morning lately ... and it is safer to work on simpler pieces at such times ... less likelihood of a visit from the infamous frog. The days leading up to Christmas are always very busy in the parish ... it looks like another year that I'll be doing all my shopping on 12/24 since the last two weekends have been filled with special events requiring my participation and the weekend of the 20th-21st will be just the same ... but I have always been the sort of person who works to deadline [turned my BA thesis in the day before my wedding] ... so I am not complaining.

I have finished stitching the Imaginating's Snowmanornament [from a promotional sheet with four small charts] and have finished it as a pillow ornament. I am not thrilled with this finish: my pillows always seem to distort around the edges.

I have also completed a biscornu using the skein of WDW Noel which was part of the goodie bag from the recent Mystic Stitcher's Hideaway. The colors in Noel turn a simple design into a Christmas design. The free chart I used is called Ruffled Diamond and is from the About Cross Stitch site. I used the chart "as is" for the top of the biscornu. I used the outline only from the chart for the bottom of the biscornu and I added the date and a few diagonal lines of cross stitching to fill in the space.

And I have started the Cardinal/Birdhouseornament from the Imaginating sheet mentioned above.

I am planning on finishing this ornament as a blanket stitched pillow for a somewhat more homespun look. I am also hoping that the use of the blanket stitch will give a cleaner and neater edge to the pillow shape.

After e-mailing Donna Karl directly, I got the address for The Stitching For a Cure 2009 Tree and have boxed up my two completed ornaments. I'll mail them on Monday morning along with my reveal card to my Secret Sister from the 123stitch exchange.

Perhaps after that, it will be back to the Holly and Hearts Sampler, with renewed energy and interest.

2 comments:

Lovely job on the ornaments. With a pillow finish like that its hard to get nice pointy corners. I often will cut away the excess fabric in the corners (not too much) before turning it right side out. Then you nees something to poke the corners out to a point before stuffing it.